External Optical Drive for MacBook

You do know that any of the shelf USB external DVD drives work as well? I have a Pioneer portable external DVD drive that i keep around for multiple tasks and use it with all of my Macs.

The Macbook Air DVD drive apparently requires more power from the USB port than the Macbooks provide so might not be feasible.

Just a quick note about this thread, I have the same problem but was apprehensive about buying an external CD/DVD drive because most of them don't say they are compatible with Mac OS only Windows. Can I assume this is not true, it would be great if I could buy a decent drive at last and not worry about the large cost of replacing the built in one. Would I have to download any firmware for a new External drive or would it work from the start?

Cheers Richard

I bought a Samsung Slim External DVD Writer model SE-S084C, less than $100, works great.

It seems like there are dozens, hundreds, thousands? of us whose MacBook optical drives are non-functional. I think we should all contact Apple Support and ask for an extended warranty on this obviously-faulty piece of hardware!

Agree, Canadagranny. I'm another MacBook owner - longtime Mac fan - but the internal CD/DVD drive quit working a long time ago. Same thing happened to another friend of mine. It was clearly some kind of problem with the drives from the get-go.

Well, finally someone agrees with me that this optical drive problem is a manufacturer's defect! Thank-you for that. It seems so obvious to me, when almost every day someone new comes on this forum and says "my optical drive spits out everything after a few seconds". How could that not be a problem with the hardware? And we all have to just suck it up and buy new drives, internal or external.

I bought one of these as well, but cannot figure out how to get my macbook to recognize it...can you help me?

same problem on my macbook

I have the same problem. My Macbook's internal optical drive failed (with a disc inside), makes lots of sounds upon bootup but doesn't work. I bought the Samsung external DVD burner, plugged it into the USB port and it powers up, but the Macbook won't recognize it. Any ideas?